You people make me laugh as soon as someone says something that is not in agreement with your views they are labeled an anti-semite. You talk about free speech yet I have seen many letters to the editor of the nassau herald screaming that certain letters should not have been published because they were not in agreement with your orthodox views yet you feel free to label and smear people when they don't agree with you . You are the most racist disgusting people I have ever met. yours is a religon of exclusion not inclusion. you expect that the community should make changes for your beliefs instead of your changing to adapt to the community. you cry about being so hated for no reason when the simple answer is that you give non-orthodox no other choice with your actions. I could go on forever pointing out why you are so hated but it is just a waste of time as i am sure you and your people will just label me as anti-semitic but the truth is i am far from anti-semitic just ANTI-ORTHODOX

To Anon 11:37:As an Orthodox Jewish person reading your angry post my initial reaction was ...well anger obviously...I assume this is the response you were trying to illicit.So, instead of dishing back the vitriol you have spewed at all of the orthodox people in the entire world I will calmly and simply say your opinion is just sad.Judaism is a beautiful and peaceful religion. We don't go out killing peple in the name of our creator.We are taught to seek peace and love peace with our neighbors.We are taught, from a very young age to care about others, to be polite and most of all to seek justice and truth.(If you just don't beleive any of that try this - Go into a local Judaica store (try Judaica Plus on Central Ave.) and purchase a CD for kids - it doesn't really matter which one. The theme will be all about respect, honoring your parents and teachers, doing "mitzvas" (good deeds) such as visiting the sick, taking in guests, helping the poor and needy.BUT, we are ALSO taught to stand up for ourselves. As kids we have always heard the horror stories of our grandparents and great grandparents. The tales of mistreatment, of persecution and, of course, of cold blooded murder. These are real - my grandmother was not lying to me when she told me that the Nazi's stuffed her, 9 months pregnant, into a cattle car and, when she delivered the baby in this horror of a place, the officer simply threw the infant out the window.So what the HELL does this have to do with school board issues in Cedarhurst in 2007??Simple. This history is our history. It is embedded in our culture and in our minds. Although we learn from an early age to be kind and fair, we also learn to be distrustful and wary. It is never actually said, but it is implied. It's about survival. This is the reason why some of "the orthodox" may come across as "exclusive" or cold.We also have a culture that is close to four THOUSAND years old. We protect this culture shamelessly and vigerously. We are proud of our culture and our heritage. The only way we can protect this heritage is by educating our childrend in schools that teach our values and beliefs. This does not reduce YOUR values and beliefs, we are simply protecting OURS. To suggest, as you do, that we should abandon these beliefs because we live in a community where many of the older residents don't share them is flat out ludacris.So, here's the bottom line. Get to know some of us - in a non-confrontational environment. You'll learn that not all of "The Orthodox" of evil, mean spirited jerks but, rather, most of us are warm, friendly and kind people - if a bit mis-understood.The situation in our community is sad because it pits one culture against another and, in the heat of "battle", both sides seem to forget that ultimately, what we ALL want is simply to have a nice, peaceful place to live - a nice park to have a catch with our kids.I HOPE you will one day reconsider your very close-minded position.

I;d like to state on record that while there are many points of legitimate debate of the sometimes conflicting wants and needs of the different communities within the five towns, I am not anti-Unorthodox.

i'm not pointing this out to make myself right and in the process make someone else wrong. I am only stating it because i want to be the first of many, many orthodox five towns residents who will wholeheartedly announce that they are NOT anti-unorthodox.

I hope over time, there will be just as many unorthodox jews who will be orund to say that they are not anti-orthodox.

I hope we can clear the air of mistrust and unintentional hatred. We can all use a breather.

11:37's response shouldn't be dismissed- this is what our actions are being perceived by the world and we shouldn't discount it just because she used an angry tone.I've said it before- this is the problem by calling yourself Ortho and giving off that these views represent the Ortho community

I knew my post was going to bring angry responses calling me a hater and closed minded among other things, was that my intention? I am not sure. For the record my step father is jewish my 2 best friends are jewish but not orthodox. Most non orthodox jewish people that I know even say that it is very hard to get along with orthodox people.We are all aware of the history of jewish persecution.I work for and deal with jewish people for the last 20 years and my anger or hatred if you choose to call it is not for all of the orthodox in the world just for the closed minded ones who claim to be doing the best for the community which is being shown to mean just the orthodox community.You must remember that the people that are left in this community are not the ones who created the mess that the districtis in. For years we were subjected to increases in taxes voted on by school boards that represented the more affluent people of the community despite our objections as they wanted the best for their children. Now after their children have grown and they have sold their houses and left the community with all of the excessive contracts given out by them you have come in and while i commend the effort to righten things the ones bearing the hardships are our children not yours. My children have to sit in classrooms that are in dire need of repairs,textbooks that are torn and tattered and not enough to give one to each student.We pay taxes just like everyone else and I am sure if your children were subjected to what our children are you would be up in arms.The community has changed with a large increase of immigrants who have different needs then previous student bodies did yet performances are being used in an unfair way to show supposed waste.unfortunatly i have to go to work right now and dot not have time to go into further details. But I leave you with this there are many closed minds on your side of the fence who need to open their eyes and look at it from the other side also and I would feel the same way if it were not the orthodox but ant religon or race of people when it comes to hurting my children.that I am sure we can agree on

I think the viciousness of the anti-orthodox anonymous commenter on this thread just goes to show how absurd this lawsuit is. The bottom line is anonymous posters say nasty things and we can't take them all so seriously.

"Congrats- now you have the non-frum checking in- brings the loshon hara to a new level"

You know what... this is a stupid thing to write. what are you accomplshig by being so negative (?) stupid (?)

azamat, what's not to get? Do we all have to be anti- something. Can't we just hate each others opinion and work to resolve that conflict? Why does it always have to be so personal? What's the point? What does that solve or prove?

Anon. 1:03, your post is one of the few I've seen around here that has digressed from anger to fair, illuminating, and lucid points.

The frustration you describe about shouldering the burden of long-gone big spenders is an idea I have not yet heard. If both sides of this debate could articulate the frustrations they feel in a non-acrimonious forum, one that is centered on being right without making the other side wrong, I think we would start to realize that we're standing on different sides of the same boat.

Sadly, though I don;t want to harp on this and change the tone of dialogue, i wonder if the board politics fuel the fire or reflect it. Pam's lawsuit does nothing to dissipate the fury. As for Orthomom, I think this blog is more an opportunity to talk turkey without having to devolve into name calling. We have ot live together. If board meetings become shouting matches, why can't a blog be utilized as an efficient tool for meaningful dialogue?

Either way, I'd love to see people getting mad, getting frustrated, and arguing their points, but not as a means of fortifying intractable positions -- but rather to hash out every option to resolve our differences. The fighting and threats and hatred and lawsuits and stonewalling hurts everyone.

Excuse me Mr. I hate Orthodox Jews. I am a Conservative Jew and may I say you are way off base, no matter what the "flavor" of Judaism you practice we are ALL the children of Israel, there are welcoming and snooty Jews of all kinds

I invite you to read thisttp://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-jews-cant-we-all-just-get.html

MR yid with lid there are welcoming and snooty people of all kinds not just jews. My first post was written with a lot of anger that has been building for a while now. Of course I know that things like this does not help anything. As I said was I looking for angry responses? maybe or maybe in it's inappropriate way it sheds some light on the fustration and anger that is being built up in the community. As a tax paying homeowner I would like to see waste and misuse of our tax dollars come to an end just as the private school parents do. But that being said you must also realize that from our side of the story all we see is drastic measures trying to be taken at the expense of our children. As I said earlier we suffered for many years dealing with the affluent part of the district constantly increasing the budget while at the same time all we would get from it was whatever trickled down to "our side of the tracks" after they improved the schools on their side of the tracksBut to now watch as things go completely in the opposite direction is to much for any people who care about their children to handle. Yes there needs to be changes made but this cannot happen overnight as the problems did not happen overnight.When realignment of the district was brought up some years back to better utilize the resources we had I went to some of the school board meetings and the reaction of the affluent side was incredible they looked down on us as if we were some sort of pond scum. There were all kinds of jestures and comments being made by them that would have riled even Ghandi. The nerve we had to suggest that our children can go into their schools and neighborhoods or that their children should come into our schools or neighborhood was totally absurd to them.As far as they were concerned we should not even be part of the 5 towns. After dealing with years of this snootiness you can surely see why we are now so defensive when it comes to our children. What we see is people again treating our children as insignificant when it comes to your goals. Real or not this is how it is perceived by us.The harsh cuts and voting down of budgets just fuels the fire. The problems cannot be fixed overnight as I said you must understand all we want is what's best for our children. We see you as not caring for our children perceived or not if the shoe was on the other foot as they say you would be fighting just as hard as we are.We want what you want we have had to endure the burden of tax increases for many years before you got here. We were out voted then as we are now but the difference is that while it caused us economic hardships at least our children were not suffering from having programs cut and supplies not available as they are now. I have lots more to say about this and will exchange dialogs in the future but as I said we know where you are coming from when it comes to fiscal responsibility and we agree but we must not let our children suffer while trying to fix the problems. Then hopefully all the hatred can stop. Try to look at things from our side as we are trying to see them from yours

"and I am sure if your children were subjected to what our children are you would be up in arms."-anon 1:03

Our children were subject to the same hardships your children were. They were going to schools with ripped tattered books, having to share them, cold classrooms, bad teachers, etc. Take a look at what some of the early yeshvos in America looked like. We found a solution to that dilemma, we paid for better facilities. We worked second jobs at night to improve the conditions of our schools, and we still pay for it. I work nights, weekends, and forgoe many of the luxuries my public school sending neighbors enjoy. Don't cry to me that your children suffer, there are options, if you are willing to sacrifice for your childs education. Private schools are expensive, but if one's top priority is one's child's education, then no price is too much to pay.

I also work nights and weekends and forgoe luxuries this was the sacrifice we made to buy our house in what was then one of the better districts on the island which has now been destroyed. anyone can keep bringing up the past we all struggled when we got here. that has nothing to do with what is going on now

Flatbush Renegade:I have to say, your tone in addressing (angry) Anon is innapropriate.I understand your sarcasm - Angry Anon said some VERY nasty things in his/her original post (11:37). However, I beleive my calm and rational reply to AA's anger has led to something remotely close to actual dialog.Seriously though, AA would agree that his/her (Anon feel free to ID your sex so I don't have to do the his/her thing) original post was malicious and mean-spirited and insulting- "Written in anger" as he/she described.The second comment was already much calmer and this latest post was downright rational.Look everyone, there's a LOT of anger and tension in the neighborhood and the ONLY way we can fix this is to remain respectful and calm and make rational arguments to defend your position - even when dealing with someone who is being irrational or even hateful.Hate is bred from anger - if we could ALL just calm down we would find a lot more common ground then we think. And who knows - some of us may even end up friends...hey, ya never know.

i will say that there definitely is a lot of anger out here, but i willalso say that om is always resapectful and does not express the anger you are talking about. i never see it here on this site. she is allowed to criticize pam greenbaum without being sued. its rediculous. we are talking abotu constitutional rights.

to all my fellow 5 -towners.....you all thought the division among us would end when GG was sold to a FRUM individual..what a joke....all yu do is find another jew to hate. what a sad lot live here. whatever happened to the concept of " a jew is a jew is a jew"???? are the only "real jews" those that wear payos?? and what about our husbands who dont? are we now sleeping with the enemy?

Hey This non-frum has one thing to say to all you frummies...and you better listen closely.

May your your Shabbos be filled with the warmth of family and friends.

To all of us whatever flavor of observance, When you light your candles (in NY I guess in about a half hour) Rememeber there are Jews of all observance levels saying the same blessing over similar candles. We are one people I will be making the same blessing of Kosher wine as you do) I really appreciate my orthodox friends who have made me feel welcome in the blogworld. (my friend chaim from freedom's cost calls me a closet ortho anyway) To those of you who thing that we should remain apart and its not Just "frum" , I hope you can look into those candles and find ways to build bridges, after all when you go back far enough we all come from 3 brothers, Judah, Binyamin and Levi. Maybe we should look for ways to start acting that way.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this blog or it's post's DO NOT reflect those of Orthodox Judaism. According to Orthodox Judaism a person is not allowed to say useless negative statements about others OR own a blog which hosts other people's negative comments.These people do not by any means represent the Orthodox community in the 5 Towns. They represent themselves. Nothing positive is gained by their negative rants and the world would be a better place without it. Free speech is protected by the Constitution. Useless negative speech is not protected by the Torah.

Thank you for the (unnecessary) disclaimer. Orthomom speaks for herself and it would be wrong to credit her as the voice of any group. I only would add that "free speech" is not the same as "defamatory speech" - the latter being unprotected by Torah or the First Amendment. Most of us outsiders do not attribute what we read here to anyone other than the writers, anonymous or not. Judaism, like the Five Towns, is big enough and strong enough for all of us.

"Anonymous said... I also work nights and weekends and forgoe luxuries this was the sacrifice we made to buy our house in what was then one of the better districts on the island which has now been destroyed. anyone can keep bringing up the past we all struggled when we got here. that has nothing to do with what is going on now "

You missed my whole point. I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about the present. I don't live in a house on the island, I'm not a five towns resident. Sure I'd like to have that luxury, and were I not paying private school tuition, I'd be more than able to afford it. I sacrifice that for my children's education. If you truly feel your children's education is important enough than you can make the same sacrifice, or you can choose not to. But don't throw it in our faces that our children aren't "suffering", and that would they be, we'd be up in arms. The reason our children aren't suffering is because we choose to pay for them not to suffer.

I fully understand your point. I bought my house here because at that time the lawrence district was one of the best on long island. I could have stayed in a less expensive neighborhood and sent my children to private schools also . We made the sacrifice to pay the higher taxes to live here in a highly rated district instead. We felt that being in a better neighborhood that had more to offer our children was worth the sacrifice.But now our district is being torn apart by people who want the best of both worlds. They want to live in a good neighborhood but do not want to pay the price to do so.It would be like going into your neighborhood and raising your taxes so high that you could no longer afford to live there and now you would have to choose stay and send your children to public school or move away. I don't know about you but I cannot afford to do both but I should not have to make this choice. Now that the district is beyond repair and the future (or lack of) is clear I am hoping to sell my house quickly and get as far away as possible which I am sure will make you happy.

"But now our district is being torn apart by people who want the best of both worlds. They want to live in a good neighborhood but do not want to pay the price to do so"

They are more than happy to pay the price. What they are fighting for is for the expenses to be justified, and for there to be some accountability for the waste. And *gasp* for equal use of the funds that they contribute WITHIN THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE LAW. They aren't looking for thier teachers to be paid by these funds, but why can a public school class schedule a dance or holiday party in OUR school building for free, but my children have to pay for the same use?

"and raising your taxes so high that you could no longer afford to live there "

Excuse me? Are you insinuating that the higher taxes were the brainchild of the orthodox community?

"I don't know about you but I cannot afford to do both but I should not have to make this choice."

Niether could I afford to do both, that's why I don't live in Lawrence, I had to choose between the higher taxes and my children's education.

"I am hoping to sell my house quickly and get as far away as possible which I am sure will make you happy."

Nothing could be further from the truth. What would make me happy would be for everyone to realize that the entire community contributes to the education budget, and just because a family opts to pay for private education does not mean that they have any less of a say in how those funds are speant, nor do they have any less of a right to demand fair distribution of those funds.